


every day I like you a little mower

by elanev91



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, heat wave bashing, i'm back with an au no one asked for, inspired by my whole body hurting after mowing my lawn yesterday, lawn mowing au, love island jokes that no one will laugh at but me, swearing (like in everything I write), well you thought wrong, you read that right, you thought I was done making up aus with "grocery store au" and "mass transit au"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:59:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26083078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanev91/pseuds/elanev91
Summary: Lily was JUST trying to be a good daughter and help her father with his yard work. Too bad the bloke next door is always outside and also the most annoyingly talkative person on the planet.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 59
Kudos: 179





	every day I like you a little mower

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sorry for the nonsense you're about to read.
> 
> (though I am sorry about not posting in months -- I'm editing my novel and let me tell you, it's taking forever. We love where we're at though and FINGERS CROSSED FOR ME because I'm going to send it back out to agents soon)
> 
> ((also I didn't do my usual 10,000 edits on this one, so sorry if it's shit/there are errors, it was just fun to write, okay))
> 
> (((also can you believe this isn't 10,000 words, speaking of 10,000??? Because I literally can't. Who am I and what have I done with me?)))

It wasn't supposed to get this bloody hot in Britain.

It was controversial to say it, but as far as Lily Evans was concerned, that was one of the most redeemable qualities about the place, the fact that the summers were mild and you could wear jeans through basically the whole year if you wanted to. The fact that you could go from June to September without your skin melting off your body in the heat.

It was a bit muggy, sure, but it was a whole _other_ kind of muggy to be standing out in her father's back garden in honest to god thirty-four degree weather panting her last breath while bent double over his reel mower.

'I'm feeling a bit mugged off, if I'm honest,' she muttered to the mower, doing her best Hannah Elizabeth accent and looking like a bit of a fool in the process because the blades weren't about to respond to her. She took another moment to breathe — and stop herself talking to the lawn equipment — before she straightened up and, wiping the back of her hand across her brow, started trying to push the mower through the grass again.

Earlier that week — in the time before the heat wave, the time before Lily spent every waking moment fantasising about ice baths and freezers — she'd come over to have lunch with her father and realised, upon an accidental glance out the kitchen window, that he had more of a meadow than a back garden these days.

The grass was at least six inches long, there were weeds riddled throughout, and the small vegetable gardens along the fence, the ones her mother had tended for over twenty years, were so overgrown that Lily couldn't even see the wooden frames anymore. She'd known that her father was feeling worse and worse these days, that he'd never really recovered from losing mum last year, but there was something about seeing such tangible evidence of it that made her stomach ache.

'Well, you know,' her dad had said when she'd pointed out the absolute state of things, waving his hand like he'd just said all that needed to be said on the subject.

Lily cocked her eyebrow at him. 'Do you need help with the garden?'

'No, no.' He, again, waved his hand, this time adding in an evasive sip of tea that told Lily all she needed to know.

'Dad, I can help you.' She dunked her chocolate digestive into her own tea, holding it there just long enough that the biscuit softened before she moved it swiftly to her mouth. 'I'm free most weekends.'

Especially true now that she was single again and would probably die unlovable and alone.

'You wouldn't need to come over _every_ weekend, Lils.'

How easily he'd given in.

She'd expected more resistance, but she supposed that even Michael Stubborn-As-Fuck Evans couldn't deny that he needed help.

The stubbornness was apparently inherited because it was all that was keeping her going through the increasingly terrible afternoon sun.

She'd been alright for the first bit of the day when she was pulling the weeds out of the grass — she'd decided, when it had taken her two hours to just do the general weeding, to put off weeding the vegetable gardens until next weekend — but pushing her father's ancient reel mower through the too-tall grass?

Fucking forget about it.

It took every single ounce of strength she had to move the thing forward even a few inches. It might have been alright if she was working with something manufactured in the last decade — or, you know, something motorised — but her father was one of those "if it still works, why bother replacing it" sort of people and, truth be told, she'd loved the idea of getting the yard work done without kicking that extra bit of carbon dioxide into the air.

It was a feeling she was regretting now that she was collapsed over the handlebar of the mower for the second time in as many minutes.

'Hey, are you okay over there?'

She shot up straight, looking round at the sound of someone speaking to, presumably, her. She didn't see anyone for a few seconds, but her eyes finally landed on a bloke standing in the garden next door. He was tall enough that she could see half his torso over the fence and he had an amused grin on his face, like the thought of her dying was the funniest thing he'd ever seen.

It was too bad she was now obligated to despise him because, from what her brain was able to process through her heat exhaustion, he was actually (with his sharp jaw and broad shoulders and messy black hair and dark brown skin) pretty fit.

'I think I'm dying,' Lily said, straightening up again and giving the mower another almighty shove. 'Thanks for checking in.'

He laughed, the sound a deep, full bodied rumble. 'Sorry to hear about your untimely passing.'

'Well you know,' Lily managed a full metre this time before the blades caught on the enormous pile of grass in them, 'the good die young and all that.'

She tipped the mower onto the side and, with the toe of her trainer, started pushing the blades, knocking the grass onto the ground.

He laughed again. 'Did you just move in next door? I don't think I've seen you before.'

Lily set the mower back down onto the grass and, after mentally preparing herself, started driving herself forward. She managed almost a metre and a half that time before she had to tip the mower to the side and kick out the grass again.

'No,' she said, watching the blades spin underneath her foot. 'My dad lives here.'

'Oh, okay.' He reached up and ran his hand through his hair. 'I was wondering because, like, I hadn't seen the house on sale or anything. But I also hadn't seen you before, you know, like I said, so….'

Luckily, he seemed to have rambled himself out. She spared him a fleeting glance before she started mowing again.

He didn't say anything to her for the next few rounds of mowing and unclogging, so she'd thought that he'd gone inside (a relief, really, because no one needed to watch her become a sweaty tomato) when he spoke again.

'I can't believe I haven't seen you here before. You know, because your dad lives there.'

She cocked an eyebrow at him as she stamped her foot down on the blades again. 'Should I have introduced myself? Left a calling card?'

'No.' He was laughing, but it sounded different this time, a little awkward, maybe a little embarrassed. 'I just — I'm surprised, I guess.'

'I usually come over during the day,' she said. 'You've probably been at work.'

She wasn't sure why she was bothering talking to him. Probably because she was dying and she thought she deserved one last conversation with a bloke before she was six feet under.

'Oh, yeah, that makes sense.' He was nodding his head like she'd just solved some fantastic calculus equation in front of him (which, of course, she could do, but she wasn't _going_ to do because she didn't often find that people were that impressed with her maths skills).

She didn't say anything, just kept straining her muscles and praying to god that she didn't send her spine shooting out with the effort.

'Do you want some help? I can get my little mower and we can be done in no time.'

She flicked her gaze up at him as she lifted the mower back up and started kicking the grass out again. His expression was so genuine that she almost took him up on it, but, now that she'd sunk five hours and probably as many litres of sweat into the soil, she wasn't about to let herself give up.

She made an incredibly unseamly joke about Prince Andrew in her head and had to bite her lip to stop herself laughing. If she hadn't signed her one way ticket to hell already, there was that, signed, sealed, delivered.

'No, that's okay.' The reel was really jammed this time and her foot slipped a little on the blade. 'I've got it.'

'Are you sure? I've got an electric mower. It's no trouble.'

'I'm sure it isn't,' Lily didn't mean for her voice to sound short, but, really, she just wanted to get on with it. 'But really, I've got it.'

He, thankfully, didn't press any further.

Though he did sit down on his back patio and proceed to make stilted conversation with her for the hour that it took her to finally, _finally,_ finish mowing the back garden.

Infuriatingly, he was outside again a week later and _again_ the week after that and — it felt almost unnecessary to even say it at this point — _again_ the week after that. It started to feel like an elaborate pisstake, a joke whose punchline she wasn't quite sure of but could feel lingering at the end of the line all the same.

Every time he saw her out in the back garden — usually while she was in the middle of making some kind of horrific face that she swore helped her get through whatever particularly heinous thing she was doing — he'd light up, every single muscle in his face switching on as he flashed her a megawatt smile, and he'd hold his hand up in an annoyingly jaunty sort of wave. The first time, she held her hand up in return, her lips pressed together in a sarcastic smile, but sarcastic smiles, apparently, weren't the sort of thing to deter him.

It really was easier out there now that she'd gotten through the horror that was the first weekend. The grass was shorter now that she was out here to cut it every week (or, alright, every _other_ week because, honestly, she was now just taking it in turns between weeding the vegetable gardens and cutting the grass) and so it didn't require nearly as much effort to get her work done every Saturday (which was a miracle and a godsend because she'd been so sore after that first week that she hadn't moved from her bed for the whole of Sunday).

As frustrated as she was with her incredibly chatty audience, she still found herself — quite unintentionally — cataloguing the incredible number of details she learned about him over the ensuing weeks.

He was called James ('Potter,' he'd said, tacking it onto the end with such speed you would have thought she required his second name for some kind of paperwork she was filling out. 'James Potter') and he shared the house next door with his brother, Sirius ('and basically Sirius' boyfriend, too, which is alright because Remus is actually really cool') and, apparently, according to James' mother, it was a miracle he and Sirius hadn't managed to burn the house down by now. He studied History ('and Languages and Cultures!') at SOAS and, even though his Urdu was still, also according to his mother, very substandard, he was working at it and he actually thought he was quite good now.

He said a few things to her in Urdu as though proving himself, but — and she laughed a little as she said it, but not unkindly — she had literally no way to judge whether what he said made any sense or not.

'It sounded good to me,' she said, grabbing an enormous weed out of what was formerly the pepper garden and throwing it into the pile behind her. 'And I hope you didn't say anything rude.'

She was always rewarded when she said something like this and this time was no different — his hand jumped immediately to his hair and he rumpled it, like he was trying to shake out what he should say next from his roots.

'No, I said, uh, I like talking to you and you're wearing a very nice top today.'

As the top she was wearing today was currently covered in dirt (and was no fancier than a shirt from some fundraising 5k she'd done last year) she knew he was full of shit.

It must take her twice as long to get through the things she needed to do with James talking her ear off constantly. She tried, at first, to keep her answers short, to not add in any extra information or do anything to keep carrying on the discussion, but James was the sort that could have a conversation with a brick wall and so, really, it didn't take much from her for him to keep going. Eventually, she found herself responding a little more, giving him a few details about her own life, not that there was very much to know.

'I just started going to uni this year,' she said. It was the sort of detail that people sometimes have a hard time dealing with, the kind of thing that made them ask a million questions (the worst of which was what the hell she'd been doing with her life for the last seven years that she was just _now_ getting herself to university) so she looked down at the mower as she said it, paying close attention to the grass she was cutting across the fence line.

'That's cool, what are you studying?'

She looked up at him to check if he was having her on — he sounded genuine, but, you know, you had to be sure — and, sure enough, he was looking at her with honest to god interest on his face.

'Maths and Physics,' she said. That was another one that sometimes landed the wrong way, so she waited a beat, bracing herself against any sexist bullshit that might, all of a sudden, start spilling out of his mouth.

Instead, he just shook his head, awed. 'That's fucking amazing.'

She laughed, the sound a little relieved. 'Only if you like linear algebra.'

He grinned at her. 'I can barely do regular algebra.'

When she finally walked inside around three that afternoon, her father had a cuppa on the table for her, a plate of chocolate digestives beside it. Lily sank down into her chair and groaned as, all at once, the muscles in her legs and lower back finally relaxed for the first time in hours.

'The beds look really good, Lils,' her dad said. He was looking out through the window in the back door but his eyes snapped to hers after a beat.

'Thanks.' She grabbed her tea and, even though it was hot, she practically inhaled it. It was cooler today — thank christ — than it had been a month ago, and so she didn't feel like she was burning her insides. 'I should be able to finish the last bed next week. I was thinking about doing it today, but my shoulders —'

As though she'd summoned it, her shoulders started aching and she rolled them in a half-hearted attempt to prevent the DOMS that was going to put her through hell for the next few days.

'No, no, it can wait.' Her dad took another sip of his tea before he leant back in his chair. Lily could feel his eyes on her, like he was studying her, and it made her feel like a teenager again, all the way down to the part where she completely avoided meeting his gaze.

'I saw that, uh, James was out there talking to you again,' he said. He said it casually, like he was saying anything else, but Lily knew her dad well enough to know where this was going.

'He's nice,' she said, her tone daring him to walk them down the path he was nudging them towards. 'Talks a lot, though.'

He laughed and it was almost the full-bodied laugh she remembered. 'He does. Sweet kid, though.'

Lily hummed through another sip of her tea.

Her father seemed incredibly interested in her conversations with James over the next few weeks — he wanted to know what they talked about, what James was up to, what Lily thought about him. She kept asking him why he was so interested, but every time he asked, he just shook his head or waved her off, acting like his incessant, unending interest in James Potter was something normal — it was triggering, honestly, because the more she talked to him (and the more she talked about him), the more she was having to convince herself that her own incessant, unending interest in James Potter was nothing more than your usual.

The last Saturday in August, Lily arrived at her father's house a little bit earlier than normal. He'd been surprised to see her when she walked through the front door, but was happy enough to let her start mowing the lawn.

'I'm going out later this morning,' he said, following her out onto the patio, 'I'm going to nip to the garden centre, I think. Grab some things for the beds.' He nodded his head towards the now empty vegetable gardens.

Lily turned, pausing halfway towards the small shed at the back of the garden. She just looked at him for a beat, tried to read his expression, but his expression was carefully neutral (another thing she'd inherited).

'You sure?' She sounded hesitant, a little wobbly.

Her dad swallowed and, after a swift few blinks of the eye, nodded. 'It's about time, I think.'

Lily nodded slowly. 'Yeah.' She let the word hang between them for a moment before, blinking back her own tears, she said, 'What are you going to plant?'

'I've got your mum's old plans somewhere,' he said. 'She'd mapped out what things you should plant next to each other and all that and I'm going to rustle them up and follow that.'

'Mum had, like, a million things in there, though,' Lily said. As she said it, she had a vivid memory of her childhood summers, the baskets of fresh produce her mum used to bring in every morning. The bright red and yellow peppers, the deep green courgettes, the spring green peas that Lily and her sister had had to spend ages snapping the ends off of.

Her dad breathed a little laugh now. 'I know. I think I'll start with one bed for now, see how we get on. There's not much anyway, you know, now that we're doing the winter planting. She always preferred the summer crops.'

She had.

Two hours later, Lily'd just finished doing a final pass through of all the beds and mowing the back garden — she really was an old hand at it by now — when she heard the doorbell ring through the house. She frowned, furrowing her brow (because, really, her dad's car was gone, so who the hell would be showing up here), as she swiped her hand back across her forehead again and, after kicking her muddy shoes off at the door, walked through the kitchen towards the front of the house.

She couldn't help the sound of surprise that fell out of her when she opened the door. 'Oh.'

James was standing on the other side of the door, a nervous smile on his face that grew by degrees when he saw her. She was suddenly viscerally aware of the swipe of dirt across her cheek and the fact that she probably smelled like sweat and Boots deodorant.

'Hi.' His smile widened and Lily felt her own expression mirror his, even if only slightly. 'Is your dad here? He asked if I could swing by and take a look at a table to see if Sirius and I wanted it.'

And, in that instant, Lily knew.

She pressed her fingertips into her forehead and rubbed the lines out of her brow. 'Fucking hell.'

'Uh... what?'

How was she going to explain this without it sounding both completely awful and completely creepy?

'I don't think he had a table for you to look at,' she said. She hoped she didn't sound as mortified as she felt (or as homicidal as she felt because she was honest to god going to kill her father the minute he got home).

'Oh.' It was James' turn to look a little surprised and, as though on cue, his hand went up to his hair again. 'Okay.'

She thought that he might just turn around and leave but no such luck. She was really going to have to —

Ugh.

'I think he thinks that we needed to talk to one another like normal people,' Lily said. 'You know, like, not over a fence.'

James laughed a little, the sound loosening up some of the anxiety on his face. It was beautiful to watch, really, the way that his features relaxed, amazing to see it in person rather than across a few metres, a fence, and a haze of sweat.

'He sounds like my mum. She's been telling me for weeks to just come over here and talk to you.' He smiled shyly at her, the slight dip in his gaze making her heart falter in her chest. 'Apparently, shouting at you over the fence for the last two months has been very unbecoming of me. I'm not recommending myself at all.'

Lily snorted. 'Is your mum Jane Austen?'

'I think she thinks so,' James said. His smile was full now, that megawatt smile she's seen a million times before, but it was different seeing it this close to. From here, she could see the slight crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the soft, barely there dimple in his left cheek.

As angry as she was with her father for orchestrating all this, the rest of her mind was very rapidly shutting all thoughts of her father out of her brain for at least the next ten minutes (or however long it was that James planned on standing on the front porch).

'I'm glad to finally see the rest of you.' She gestured up and down the length of him with the hand not clutching the door frame for dear life. Her words, combined with the gesture, sounded more like a come on than she'd intended and she felt her cheeks flush red at the realisation.

'Same,' James said. His gaze flicked once over her before he met her gaze again, his smile a little shy again.

They stood there for a moment, neither of them quite sure what to say next. It was ridiculous, but she felt like there was so much riding on this conversation, like the expectations were in the stratosphere and she couldn't quite figure out a way to get herself there so that she could actually fulfill them. It wasn't that she was a terrible flirt — she'd had more than her fair share of romantic partners, thank you — but she _was_ terrible at feelings and this, right here, fell more squarely into _feelings_ than she honestly felt ready to admit to herself.

Luckily, only one of them seemed to be completely inept.

'Look, okay,' James drew in a deep breath, 'maybe this is awkward because now we both know our parents have been trying desperately to get us together, but what would you say to having dinner with me sometime?'

Lily felt herself smile. 'Without the fence?'

'No fence,' James said.

'Yeah,' she breathed a small laugh, the noise just enough to let some of the pressure out of her chest so that she didn't explode. 'Yeah, I'd like that.'

If she thought James' smile was bright before, it was nothing to James' smile now. It was so bright, so massive it nearly took over the whole of his face and his honey brown eyes were so warm and full of feeling that Lily felt like her feet had been knocked out from under her.

'Great.'

She smiled at him, though she felt sure that her smile was nowhere near as heartstopping as his own. 'Great.'

Neither of them moved, just stood there smiling at one another like fools. Finally, after a beat, James started and drew in a breath, his shoulders hitching back just a touch so he looked that much broader.

'I'll let you, uh,' he ran his hand through his hair again and Lily had to bite her lip to keep from smiling. 'I'll let you get to it.'

'Okay.'

He took a step back off her porch. 'How's Tuesday sound, by the way? For dinner?'

She nodded. 'Tuesday works for me.'

He nodded his head once, still smiling, before he turned on his heel and started walking down the path towards the pavement. He was about halfway back to his house when Lily realised.

'Wait!'

James froze on the spot and turned to face her, the sunlight flashing off his glasses as he moved. 'Changed your mind?'

She laughed. 'You didn't get my number.'

'Oh, shit.' James laughed and pulled his mobile out of his back pocket. 'Fire away.'

She rattled the number off and, after one last slightly awkward wave from her front step, Lily walked back inside. She shut the door softly behind her, almost like she was afraid that, if it made any sound, it would shatter her reality and erase everything that had just happened. She waited a moment, maybe two, before, fingers shaking a little bit, she grabbed her mobile out of her back pocket.

_WhatsApp_

_Chat with: Dad_

_Lily: I AM GOING TO KILL YOU WHEN YOU GET HOME_

_Dad: I hope you're prepared to plant all the vegetables then._

_Lily: DAD_

_Dad: Yes, Lily?_

_Lily: WHY DID YOU SEND HAMES OVER HERE WHEN YOU KNEW YOU'D BE GONE_

_Dad: I don't know a "Hames"._

_Lily: DAD!_

_Dad: I'm not admitting to anything_

_Dad: But I will say that I might have thought you two needed a wee push_

_Lily: I've never mowing your lawn again_

_Dad: Sure, sure_

_Dad: But is there anything you want to tell me? Any…. schedule updates I might need to know about?_

_Lily: ….. We're going out on Tuesday_

_Dad: You're welcome :)_

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://elanev91.tumblr.com/)!


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